BEEP

Think of Beep as a quantum physicist wearing tie-dye trousers: it’s clever with the physics, but not so easy on the eyes.

It’s a 2D platform game where you control a little robot on wheels, or Wall-E as forged by Korean merchandisers. You visit different planets in a solar system (there’s a cute level selection menu with a rocket) to collect chunks of flaming gold rock. These rocks unlock more levels and more planets, but as always, it’s a little more complicated than it sounds.

Through the 24 short levels you’ll have to dodge the attacks of robots, blast lasers and most cleverly use your antigravity beam to move bits of the environment around. For example: plucking a square of desert and dropping it to block an invisible laser, then carrying it with you to climb higher. Or moving separate pieces of environment around like those old picture slider puzzles. You even have to pile up the carcasses of your enemies occasionally. Death to the robot traitors! Early on the real challenge is getting used to the mouse-and-WASD setup in a 2D environment, but only because it’s sensitive like a pimply drama student called Malcolm.

The levels span swamp lands, desert, dark caves and ice, but there’s a distinct lack of eye candy on offer unless blocks coloured in slightly different colours are your idea of visual sherbert. There are some nice puzzles, but the looks lack that final slick of lipstick and blusher: they’re bright, but ultimately boring and too simple. The Undergarden has the same style of 2D puzzling and platforming, but with more originality.